Within a year after Bautzer’s death, the firm he cofounded hit the rocks. The seeds for its destruction had been planted years earlier in the power vacuum that had been created when managing partner Frank Rothman left to run MGM/UA for Kerkorian. Stephen Silbert, son of Bernard Silbert, took the reins, but soon Rothman asked Silbert to be his right-hand man, and Silbert left also. Top-flight litigator Terry Christensen established an executive committee consisting of four partners. He was said to run the firm with an iron hand, and the Christensen years were considered to be some of the best years, but he too was enticed to work for Kerkorian’s Tracinda holding company. When these top lawyers departed, so did some of the top clients.
The downfall started in earnest the year before Bautzer’s death, when Christensen brought in star criminal attorney Howard Weitzman as a partner. Weitzman had recently represented automaker John DeLorean on cocaine charges. The remaining partners hoped Weitzman could develop a white-collar criminal defense department to handle insider trading cases, which appeared to be a growth area. Corporate attorney Ronald L. Fein and four other partners from Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue joined the firm. They claimed to have A-list Fortune 500 companies as clients and everyone thought they would be big rainmakers. According to partner Skip Miller, the new partners spent lavishly and failed to produce sufficient business to justify their extravagance. Partner Jay Rakow, who had joined the firm in 1980, complained about Fein’s spending habits. “There was some resentment that Ron was champagne taste on a beer budget.”
When Christensen tried to return to the firm in 1988, the new partners feared he would take control. They voted against his rejoining, and a civil war ensued. Many of the talented young partners departed to form Christensen, White, Miller, Fink & Jacobs. Litigation followed, with the old partners accusing the defectors of stealing clients. Both firms asked Niki Bautzer for permission to use Bautzer’s name as the first name of their firm. His fame carried significant advertising clout. In the end, Niki declined to let either side use her husband’s name.
“This was a law firm I was so proud of,” lamented Miller in a lengthy Los Angeles magazine article. “We attained things we weren’t supposed to be able to attain. We won cases other people said couldn’t be won—antitrusts, takeovers, very tough litigation…. We were, I thought, more resourceful, smarter, more aggressive than these other more famous, more well known law firms.”
Everyone agreed that Bautzer’s death was not the cause of the firm’s demise. But when asked, Patty Glaser said that had he lived, he might have figured out a way to keep it together. Glaser went on to lead her own firm, which now boasts more than eighty lawyers. She continues to represent Kirk Kerkorian and is one of the most successful female lawyers in the country. She has always given credit to Bautzer for her start. “He was wonderful to me. I would probably walk in front of a train for him.” In many ways, Glaser has carried on Bautzer’s style of loyalty and devotion to a client. “If there’s a declaration of war, I am going to be your worst enemy,” she once said. “It’s not because I am smarter than you are. I don’t see myself that way. But I’m sure very dogged and very determined, and if you attack my client, I will do what I have to do—obviously appropriately, legally, and ethically—to protect my client’s interests.”
Law partner Terry Christensen apparently took loyalty and devotion to a client a bit too far when he represented Kirk Kerkorian in a divorce from then-wife Lisa Bonder. Christensen had been a close confidant of Bautzer, one of the only lawyers Bautzer would take with him to meet with Howard Hughes in person near the end of the billionaire’s life. In 2008, Christensen was accused of engaging in illegal wiretapping of Bonder’s phone. Christensen had hired private detective Anthony Pellicano in order to get evidence against her. Patty Glaser personally defended Christensen at trial even though she had never tried a criminal case. Kerkorian testified in defense of his long-time lawyer, describing Christensen as “excellent, honest, and a true friend.” The court found Christensen guilty of conspiracy to commit wiretapping and sentenced him to three years in prison. At the time of this writing, Pellicano is serving a fifteen-year sentence in federal prison for wiretapping and other crimes. Christensen’s conviction is on appeal and he remains free until it is decided.
In 1989, Kerkorian sold MGM/UA to Pathé Communications, led by Giancarlo Parretti, an Italian publishing magnate. A short time later, Parretti lost control of Pathé, and the company defaulted on the loans used to purchase the company. After the studio passed through the hands of creditors and subsequent owners, Kerkorian bought it again in 1998. Deeply in debt from a leveraged acquisition of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Kerkorian sold the studio for a third and final time in 2004 to a consortium of investors led by Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, and other investors. The reported sale price was $5 billion, earning Kerkorian an enormous profit.
Twenty-five years after Bautzer’s death, his influence continues to be felt. Today, there remain scores of lawyers practicing law who worked with him at Wyman-Bautzer. Multitudes of clients remember the work he did for them. Those who knew him as a friend miss his larger-than-life personality. And there are still more than a few women who long for his embrace. Though he may not have been the first lawyer to concentrate on representing entertainment clients, he was certainly one of the earliest to turn it into a profession, and he was the most powerful entertainment lawyer the industry has ever known.
In the end, Bautzer’s legacy is the way he created a public image in order to advertise his services and the swashbuckling way he practiced law. He planned his life as if it were a movie. He wrote the script, cast himself as the star, and directed it himself. Years later he admitted that the $5,000 he borrowed to finance his wardrobe was what got his career off the ground. “I would never have achieved the prominence I did and achieved the success I did as a lawyer,” he said, “if I had not borrowed $5,000 and used it in the way I did.” Of course, Bautzer had special talents that also helped him achieve success. His charisma was almost magical. “Greg would walk into a dimly lit restaurant and stand in the doorway for thirty seconds,” recalled his friend Paul MacNamara. “In that time, half the women in the room would be freshening their lipstick and straightening the seams in their stockings. Many of them hadn’t turned around to look. They just felt something.” He did not merely use personality to seduce; he used it to forge friendships and create alliances. Acquaintances basked in his glow, but, more important, they felt valued, because a charming and gracious gentleman was doing his best to value them.
Bautzer’s partners and associates such as Bentley Ryan, Bernard Silbert, Arnold Grant, Gerald Lipsky, Jerald Schutzbank, Woody Irwin, and many others deserve to share the credit for his early success. They toiled in his shadow and aided his ascent, but didn’t share the limelight. “I’ve been asked many times if I wasn’t a little jealous of Greg, who was always out in front and I was always in the background,” said Irwin. “There was never any jealousy on my part, or any of the other associates and partners, because we knew that Greg was a star unto himself in the movie business and a certain degree of his fame and notoriety rubbed off on us. There was something about Greg that always brought us the controversial cases and we always seemed to be in the newspapers.”
The cumulative effect of Bautzer’s influence on Hollywood is impossible to gauge. No one knows the number of actors, directors, writers, and others whom he helped. He played a major role in the lives of Howard Hughes, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Kirk Kerkorian, and many others. Would there have been a Coal Miner’s Daughter if he had not made Bernard Schwartz the head of Joseph Schenck Enterprises? Would there have been a Godfather, Love Story, True Grit, Rosemary’s Baby, or Chinatown if Bautzer had not gotten Robert Evans his job at Paramount?
Bautzer was more than admired by his peers; he was esteemed. In the early 1980s, actor Warren Beatty befriended Bautzer. By then, Beatty had inherited Bautzer’s title as the most eligible bachelor in filmdom. Bautzer’s son, Mark, joined the two notorious rakes for lunch one day at the Bistro. Beatty was seeking advice for a planned Hughes biopic. When Bautzer left the table briefly, Beatty confided, “You know, Mark, your father was my idol all through my childhood.” Two-time Oscar winning producer Albert S. Ruddy confirmed that the sentiment was common. “He was everyone’s idol,” said Ruddy. “We all wanted to be Greg Bautzer.”